Total of 823 houses flooded in Russia’s Far-Eastern industrial center

September 12, 2013, 5:30 UTC+3At the time of reporting, the flooding affected 823 residential houses that were home to 10,057 people, including 3,225 children

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KHABAROVSK, September 12 (Itar-Tass) - Water level in the Amur River has risen by another 8 centimeters on the territory of the heavily industrialized city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur since Wednesday morning. By 08:00 hours local time, it reached the mark of 910 centimeters above the normal.

At the time of reporting, the flooding affected 823 residential houses that were home to 10,057 people, including 3,225 children.

Also flooded were 471 dachas and 629 private households, the Khabarovsk territory branch of the Ministry for Emergency Situations and Civil Defense /EMERCOM/ said.

EMERCOM officials also indicated that the number of evacuees from the zone of flooding had exceeded 3,000 people. The figure included 827 children.

The river water continued rising and experts said it might go up by another 10 centimeters to 15 centimeters over the next two days.

On this background, rescue teams continued round-the-clock dyke reinforcement works. The overall length of dykes put up in the city reaches 13,410 meters.

The evacuated people were accommodated at nine temporary shelters as well as in residential apartments specially allotted by the municipal authorities from the local housing reserves. People were getting the necessary assistance from professional psychologists.

In the meantime, the removal of water by pumps from the basement floors buildings continued and the special field teams of the Russian consumer rights watchdog agency, Rospotrebnadzor were doing permanent control of the quality of freshwater.

Vaccination of local residents and EMERCOM rescuers continued.

All in all, the operation engaged 2,996 people and 555 specialized machine.